Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  “Oh, Grady.”

  “This leaves the door open for the HRT tactical nuts, the knuckle-walkers, to take over. They’re sitting in a warehouse three miles away in their Ninja suits cleaning their assault rifles. They’ve had an emergency assault plan ready from day two. They’re on fifteen-minute call-up and they are dieseling.”

  Molly had been fearing it might come to that. She groaned.

  “Yeah,” he continued, “giving up on negotiations probably condemns those kids to death. Eighty-six percent of the hostages who die get killed during an assault. If the bad guys don’t shoot them, we do. And Mordecai has convinced us—he will kill them all the second he thinks an attack is starting. Anyway, how can we attack when we still don’t know where in the compound they’re being held?” He closed his eyes. “But we have no choice anymore. And we’re going to lose them. Oh, Molly, it’s impossible.”

  He let his head fall back on the chair. “I’m crisped.”

  She’d never before heard Grady say anything was impossible. She reached out to take his hand, but the dog, lying at his feet now, looked up and growled low in his throat. Molly drew her hand back.

  She was quiet for a minute. She had been trying to decide whether to tell him about Dorothy Huff and Samuel Mordecai’s adoption. It was a dilemma: Grady was a wonderful sounding board, the best person she knew to brainstorm with. And if there was a prayer of tracking down Mordecai’s birth mother, she needed his help. The problem was, Grady was a cop, first and foremost. If she told him, he’d feel he had to pass it on to his boss or to the FBI.

  Grady said, “Well, are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”

  Molly turned her head. He hadn’t opened his eyes. “What?”

  “Whatever it is you’re agonizing over.”

  “If I tell you, will you promise to let me decide how to use the information?”

  His eyes were open now, studying her face. “Not if it’s something to do with this mess in Jezreel. Not if I think it’s police business.”

  “Then I can’t tell you. I have a feeling about this.”

  “Molly, don’t do this. You need to tell me.”

  “I’m afraid the authorities will muck this up, that they won’t use it right.”

  “Molly, my sweet, I am one of the authorities and you are the most overconfident human being I know. What makes you so sure you are better qualified to deal with whatever it is than, say, the FBI’s chief negotiator, or a thirty-year police veteran like myself?”

  “You’re not in charge there.”

  “True. But they’re not bad, these FBI agents. They want to negotiate the kids out and they have more experience doing that sort of thing than anyone else in the country. Some of them are assholes, but, hey, so’s Samuel Mordecai.”

  She thought about it. “One thing I know, Grady: If I don’t tell anyone, there can’t be any leaks to the press.”

  “You are the press,” he pointed out.

  “No. Not in this case I’m not. This is nothing I want to write about. This information may have a much higher use.”

  Grady was quiet, clearly weighing it. Then he put a hand over his heart and said, “Trust me.”

  She leaned forward in her chair. “Did you know that Samuel Mordecai was adopted as a baby?”

  The black eyebrows went up in surprise. “Evelyn Grimes was not his mother?”

  “She adopted him when he was an infant.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says his grandmother, Dorothy Huff.”

  He sat back in his chair. “Tell me everything.”

  Molly knew that when he said everything, he meant absolutely everything, with no detail omitted. So, while the dog lay panting at their feet, she told him about Samuel Mordecai’s being found floating in a beer cooler in Waller Creek and about the adoption. Grady listened the way he always did, actively, and with total concentration, nodding and grunting and raising his eyebrows in astonishment.

  “I have the robe and the adoption papers in my truck,” she finished. “Oh, here’s something else you may not know: Gramma Huff says that Annette Grimes, Mordecai’s wife, is not in the compound. She left months ago and is in hiding.”

  “Really? She’s on our list of the hundred and twenty people we think are inside.” He stroked his long white mustache with his index finger. “That is mighty interesting. I would love to talk with Mrs. Grimes. Do you think Granny has any idea where she is?”

  “No. I’m sure she doesn’t. Annette wrote Dorothy Huff to say goodbye and that she’d never be able to contact her again. Apparently she’s terrified for her life.”

  “I bet. Molly, that’s important. I have to pass it on to Lattimore and Stein. We’ll find her.”

  “Grady, here’s what I’ve been thinking about the adoption issue. Mordecai seems desperate to know who his birth mother is. He’s tried to find her and failed. It’s real important to him. What if we could find his mother for him?” She watched his face to see if he was responding the way she wanted him to. “If we could do it, it could be a major bargaining chip to use with him. We’d reveal her identity, maybe let him talk to her on the phone if he’d release some kids. I haven’t thought it through, but before you resort to force, this might work.”

  “Maybe. If we can find her. Doesn’t sound like there’s much to go on.”

  “I think I know how we could start, or how you could.” She waited to see how long it would take him to figure out what she had in mind.

  It took two seconds. “Oh, Molly. Do you know how difficult that would be? We weren’t computerized in ’62. All those incident reports are boxed up in a warehouse in South Austin. And to find it with no one knowing what we’re looking for means I’d have to do the looking myself. Now, when I have no time as it is.”

  She gave him a wide smile. “You could do it this afternoon. Or tonight.”

  “Molly,” he wailed, “I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. And I haven’t spent any time with my dog.”

  Molly glanced down at the dog. Copperfield’s eyes narrowed into demonic slits.

  She looked back at Grady, who was grinning now. He said, “I suppose I could look for that report, if it weren’t for Copper. He’s going through a hard transition, Molly. He needs attention, and a stable home environment. The love of a good woman and a safe fenced yard.” He leaned back in his chair and waited.

  With a sinking heart, Molly looked down at the drooling muzzle and the mean amber eyes. “Oh, Christ,” she said. “Not that. Anything but that.”

  “Everything has its price, Molly.” Grady reached his arm around her shoulders, but when the dog began to growl he quickly withdrew it. “Take it or leave it.”

  They had tried to leave the dog out in the yard, but he barked nonstop. Then they let him in the house but closed him out of the bedroom. That didn’t work because he howled and scratched on the door. So they let him in, which left them with the problem of how to touch one another without getting mauled. They solved it by pulling the covers up over their heads so he wouldn’t see them. It seemd to work.

  “This is ridiculous,” Molly murmured, running her hands down Grady’s bare back. “Worse than worrying the kids will walk in on you.”

  “He’ll get used to it, Molly. Give him a little time. Actually, it may be better like this, makes it feel more illicit. Reminds me of being a kid and reading under the covers with a flashlight. Best reading I ever did.”

  Molly let her fingers wander all the way down the dip in his lower back and over his buttocks, still gloriously lean at fifty-two. “And just what were you reading under the covers, Lieutenant?”

  “Detective magazines. Comic books. Innocent stuff.”

  “Detective magazines aren’t so innocent. Ninety percent of all serial killers read them.”

  “So I guess when you grow up on them, you become either a serial killer or a cop.”

  “See, not innocent at all.” She moved her hips slowly against his until he moaned.

  Later on, sh
e was sitting on his back massaging his shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said, “that knot right there. Molly, my lease is up at the end of the month.”

  Her hands stopped kneading. “I thought you had another year to go.”

  “Well, I did, but some of the residents have been complaining, so the landlord terminated it.”

  “Because of the dog?”

  “They’re so fussy. He growled once or twice in the elevator.”

  “Objecting to being growled at in your own elevator doesn’t sound fussy to me, Grady.”

  “Well, I never really liked it there. And it’s not a good place for a dog. No yard.”

  She climbed off him and stretched out next to him.

  “I’ll have to move,” he said.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Molly, are you there or have you gone to sleep on me?”

  “I’m here, Grady.”

  “If I moved in with you”—he rested the back of his hand on her stomach and slowly inched it downward—“we could read under the covers all the time.”

  Molly was feeling her body temperature rise, but with anxiety, not passion. She leaned over and kissed him long and warm on the lips. When they both came up for breath, she said, “I love you desperately and forever. But, Grady, I’m not cut out for domestic life. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn eventually, after three failed attempts.”

  He turned onto his side and pulled her tight against him. “This is domestic life. Right here, in bed, talking, making love. Molly, you know I don’t expect you to be a wife. I just want to be close to you, see you every day, sleep next to you. So we can do this in the middle of the day, like this. I don’t want you to change your life in any way.”

  “What’s the matter with things as they are right now?” she demanded. “I love things this way. And we can do anything we want in the middle of the day now. Anyway, we tried it once and it didn’t work.”

  “Molly, that was twenty-four years ago. We’re different people now.”

  “I know, but—”

  The phone rang.

  Relieved, Molly threw off the blanket and reached for it. “Yes.”

  “Molly Cates?”

  “Yes.”

  “Patrick Lattimore, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lattimore. Grady is right here.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Under a blanket hiding from his dog.”

  “No, it’s you I want to talk with,” said the voice on the phone. “Miss Cates, do you know a Gerald Asquith?”

  Molly sat up. “No, not really. I haven’t met him. Just over the phone. We’ve talked.”

  “You had an appointment with him tonight?”

  Grady sat up and gestured to her to let him listen, too.

  She tilted the phone and he put his cheek next to hers.

  “Yes,” Molly said, “at seven.”

  “Well, he’s not going to keep it. He’s dead.”

  Molly’s breath caught in her throat. “How?”

  “He was found by a dog-walker at Pease Park, tied upside down to a tree branch, naked. Throat cut.”

  “A blood statue?” she whispered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How did you know I had an appointment with him?”

  “Asquith’s clothes were folded neatly nearby and in his pocket was his Day-Timer with your name and number. We had an appointment with him this afternoon. When did you talk to him?”

  “Last night … around nine, I think. How would the Sword Hand of God have known about him?”

  “I wondered about that, too, until I heard that Asquith did a radio show last night, one of the religious stations, and preached about the ungodly heresy of Donnie Ray Grimes.” Mordecai hated being called by his old name.

  “So they heard it?”

  “Yeah. And Mordecai might have, too, but we’re certain he can’t communicate with anyone but us. I am most distressed by this, Miss Cates. It means the Hearth Jezreelites are actively at work outside, looking for victims. How did you learn about Asquith?”

  “A friend of mine, Adeline Dodgin in Waco, knew about his past disagreements with Samuel Mordecai. She told me about him. She’s the one who persuaded him to call you.”

  “I see. Could you give me Mrs. Dodgin’s number, please?”

  “Yes. I’ll have to find my book. I’ll give you to Grady while I look. Here.” She handed the phone to Grady.

  She found her address book in the kitchen and got on the extension. She gave him the number. “I’m worried about her,” Molly said.

  “We’ll check on her,” Lattimore promised.

  When she got back to the bedroom, Grady was sitting up against the headboard looking worried.

  Molly sat next to him and slid an arm around him. From the floor came a snarling. The dog was on his feet, poised for attack. Slowly Molly withdrew her arm. “God, I couldn’t live with that, Grady.”

  Grady wasn’t paying any attention. He was staring into space. “Mordecai is lethal, he’s poison. This means anyone involved in giving information to the feds is in danger. Molly, you need to be careful.”

  “I am always careful,” she said.

  He turned a skeptical look on her.

  “And now I’ve got a chaperone.” She looked down at the dog, who had settled himself next to the bed, but was watching with vigilant eyes. “So you can go out and find that police report from August 3, 1962.”

  “We need to talk about my lease,” Grady said.

  “Sure, we can talk. But let’s wait until this Jezreel thing is over.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s say I can only consider one cataclysmic event at a time.”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  “Of course, Christianity was once a local cult which the established church leaders and the government found threatening; they saw it as extremist, subversive, and potentially violent. History has proved them to be correct.”

  MOLLY CATES, “TEXAS CULT CULTURE,”

  LONE STAR MONTHLY, DECEMBER 1993

  The dog was sleeping on the floor outside her bedroom door. Stretched out, he was so long he blocked the entire doorway. A little pool of saliva had collected on the wood floor under his long muzzle. “Move,” she said. He didn’t even twitch, so she prodded his back with a bare foot. He exploded to his feet with such force she jumped back instinctively.

  To cover her fear, she used her most authoritarian voice. “Copperfield, you are going out in the yard. Now.” She had grown up with dogs on her daddy’s ranch and had liked them well enough, but this high-strung, volatile creature was nothing like those good-natured hounds. Why on earth had she agreed to this?

  The dog looked up at Molly, trembling. She walked across the living room to the sliding-glass door and pulled it open. She stood aside and said, “Out you go.” The dog just stood where he was. “I said out,” she said louder. He lowered his head and his tail. “Dammit. Copper, come.” Very slowly the dog started toward her, one paw in front of the other, as if he were trudging through quicksand. He walked with his big head hanging. When he reached the door he stopped. Molly took hold of his choke collar and pulled him outside. As she slid the door shut, he turned and stared up at her through the glass.

  Before she reached the bedroom door again, he started barking. His barks were sharp and insistent. She whirled around. “No!” she called across the room. In answer, the dog gave one loud, abrupt bark that seemed to echo her word. “No,” she shouted again. Again he barked his imitation. She turned and stomped back to the bedroom to find her shoes. Even from inside her closet the barking was deafening; it was continuous now, and intensifying. Damnation. If he went on like that, it would drive her neighbors crazy.

  She slid her feet into her shoes and stalked back to the door. The dog had made a large cloudy smudge on the glass. The barking was incredibly loud and annoying. She certainly couldn’t leave him outside to do that. Her neighbors in this sedate town-house complex wouldn�
��t tolerate it. But she couldn’t leave him inside either. Grady had said when left alone he tended to go on a chewing rampage. Damn.

  She looked at her watch. Ten to four. She was due to pick up Jake Alesky at four, and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. She looked at the dog hard, trying to stare him down. But he kept up his barking, never even drawing a breath.

  Molly opened the door and the dog surged in. Tongue lolling, he ran around Molly in circles. “What am I going to do with you?” she said. The dog ran to the front door and sat staring at the door. “Well,” she said, “maybe we’ll try it. But don’t make me sorry.” She picked up his worn leather leash off the kitchen counter and slung her bag over her shoulder. “We’re going out to the country, Copper. Maybe you’ll run off and get lost, go feral.”

  Outside in the driveway, she lowered the tailgate on her pickup. Without being told to, the dog leapt up into the truck bed. He looked excited, she thought, happy even, holding his tail higher than she’d ever seen it. “Okay,” she told him grudgingly. “But remember, buddy, this is an experiment. I’m watching you.”

  As she drove south on MoPac she checked the rearview mirror to see what he was doing. He stood with his head raised into the wind and his eyes closed. When she pulled into Piney Haven, three small children were playing behind the office. She watched the dog apprehensively. He could easily leap out and attack them, but he showed no signs of doing that. She drove back to Jake’s trailer. He was sitting in his wheelchair under the green awning. He wore a clean white short-sleeved shirt, ironed and crisp, and aviator sunglasses.

  Molly got out of the truck, eyeing the dog uneasily. “Sorry about the dog, Jake. I’m taking care of him for a friend and I couldn’t leave him at home, so …”

  Jake wheeled himself to the back of the truck and looked the dog over. “What happened to you, fellow?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Oh, the ear? He’s retired from the APD canine unit,” Molly said. “He got beat up pretty bad, bludgeoned, actually, with a tire iron. He’s a little psycho.”

  Jake kept studying the dog. “Well, who wouldn’t be after that?” he said more to the dog than to Molly. He wheeled closer and held a hand up toward Copperfield. “Hey, fellow.” The dog leaned over the side and sniffed his hand. “What’s his name?”